In the world of marketing, focus groups are essential tools for acquiring feedback regarding new products. In particular, focus groups allow companies wishing to develop, package, name or test market a new product to discuss, view and/or test the new product before it is made available to the public at large and provide invaluable information regarding the product.
In traditional focus groups, a pre-screened (pre-qualified) group of respondents gathers in the same room. A moderator guides the group through a discussion that probes attitudes about a client's proposed products or services. Client representatives observe the discussion from behind a one-way mirror. Usually, a video camera records the meeting so that it can be seen by others who were not able to travel to the focus group site. Transcripts are also created from the video tape.
While such traditional focus groups provide accurate information, they are costly to implement. For example, if a product is to be marketed on a nation-wide basis, it would be critical to gather respondents from various locales throughout the country since attitudes about a new product may vary due to geographical considerations. As can be appreciated, this would require a significant expenditure in terms of travel and lodging expenses. Additionally, the site of a traditional focus group may or may not be in a locale convenient to a specific client. Accordingly, client representatives may have to incur travel and lodging expenses as well.
With the advent of large scale computer networks, such as the Internet, it is now much easier to link respondents electronically and thus avoid a significant amount of travel expenses. NFO Research, a market research giant, has recently announced a new form of focus group namely, an "on-line" focus group. The NFO system of on-line focus groups allows respondents from all over the country to gather, electronically, while avoiding countless logistical headaches.
Potential focus group respondents are invited by e-mail. Those who accept the invitation receive a URL and a password that admits them to a protected area within a website maintained by NFO Research. When they arrive, a trained moderator will conduct the on-line focus group over the Internet.
In NFO's on-line focus groups, when a question is asked of the group, all of the respondents type their responses simultaneously. On-line focus groups may begin with a simple series of text-based questions or they may jump right in to a technical discussion. Using a variety of commercially-available software programs, sophisticated images can be displayed on the respondent's computer screens. These images can take the form of web pages, a photo slide show, storyboards of possible future advertising or even three-dimensional (3-D) graphics.
While the NFO system of on-line focus groups does eliminate some of the logistical headaches and travel expenses associated with conducting focus groups, the NFO system still requires one or more representation from a client to be physically located with the moderator conducting the focus group. In this way, questions can be added in real time to further probe a particular response. Thus, even the NFO system requires some travel expenses since a client representative will need to travel to a NFO Research site or vice versa.
Accordingly, there is a need for the system and method of conducting focus groups using remotely located participants, including one or more moderators, one or more clients and one or more respondents, who are all physically remote from each other. In order to do this, such a system must allow for the implementation of at least two separate chat discussions to be conducted simultaneously between the three classes of focus group participants to provide an electronic analog to a one-way mirror segregating clients from respondents. In addition, such a system must allow and prohibit participation in the different chat discussions based on the class of the participant.